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Edit for alternative title: Dorite has a breakdown over spore-inspired art game

There have been a number of cases of Sagan 4 species being misinterpreted over the years. This thread serves to help collect them so that they may be identified and repaired. Extant species and those with many later descendants are priority.

Known unrepaired misinterpretations:

Several descendants of Pedesorm were mistakenly given eyes.
- Should be repairable without changing the eyeness of it or its descendants? Photoreceptors are modified chemoreceptors in real life.

Wingworm Clade: Legs and eyes mistakenly lost several times independently, but correctly retained in others.

Greencrest: Hard shell inexplicably became a segmented body and tail.
- May not be possible to repair without complete redesign. There is no plausible way for this to have happened. Fortunately, it has not produced any descendants, so we don't have to worry about that at least.

Many descendants of Plenther inexplicably transformed the left leaf into a spike.

Some living bearhogs are drawn as though they incorrectly have a mouth-like butt nostril, when in reality they should have a normal butt nostril shielded by two leaves. (Most might be possible to fix with description clarification, but Whiskerslurp takes it a step further and has its butt nostril imitate its head)

Bloodbee: It is unclear from the description which end is meant to be the head, but the constant reference to the cloacal plunger and the only plunger-like organ being on the mouth end is either a case of misinterpretation or a misinterpretation waiting to happen.

City Snotflora: Ancestor possibly misinterpreted as unicellular. The mucus inexplicably acts like a cell membrane and produces pseudopods, when it's literally just snot.

Carpofauna: Several cases where backwards-facing knees were interpreted as heels of digitigrade legs. Are any still extant that haven't had this happen?

Sucker Swarmer and descendants: Inexplicable, unexplained tail fin

Descendants of Hydrogen Jellysquid: Perhaps one of the worst misinterpretation events of them all. In its descendants, the beaked mouth inexplicably became a nostril, symmetry went sideways, and a new mouth appeared where the anus was.
- I think I can fix these at least with only inserted transitional forms, which hydro gave his blessing on. Other instances of this misinterpretation in aquatic filtersquids aren't so lucky, however.

Bristlesquid: Swapped its mouth and anus. This is reflected in living descendants, some of which have outright placed shells or armor where their mouth should be.

Plenthogs (Bearhogs and Gulpers): The fact that they smell with their barbels is seemingly forgotten, as they are inexplicably turned into horns in hornfaces and all living gulpers use their tongues to smell for no apparent reason.

Perhaps the pedesorm descendants should just have photoreceptors and chemoreceptors randomly spread across the bulbs on the end of their antennae, so that it still retains its ability to smell. Would have pretty simple vision though.

I like the rhyming name of this topic, lol

I must have mistakenly assumed the Greengill's shell was soft and accordion-like, because it was nearly the same color and lighting as the rest of its body. The Greengill's ancestors, though, make this clearer.

I believe I made the shell region very long: it doesn't have a segmented body and tail so much as it stands on its head. (Barnacles are weirdos, too.) It wouldn't be too hard to modify the Greengill art so it has a thin shell with big flexible segments.

In some of the Pedesorms, the art is ambiguous enough the eyes can be changed, or the descriptions can be changed without changing the art. However, Cube67's idea of using both photoreceptors and chemoreceptors on the bulbs of the antennae would be easier.

Ukfauna shells are not segmented, though. They're inflexible spirals. Assuming they are like molluscs, which all other species reflect, there is no precedent for them to do that.

I've added a note of wingworms losing their eyes too, another ludicrously common misinterpretation.

I added a bunch more misinterpretations and unclear stuff. I also found a misinterpretation worse than anything I could ever have imagined. I think "who approved this?" is gonna rapidly become my catchphrase.

Added another problematic squid lineage.

Is this a suitable sketch for a re-draw of the Greencrest?

It's meant to have a greatly elongated body outside of its shell. (something like a shipworm) Its pattern of stripes, which help it blend in with the faint stripes/color gradations of the Gomboc Roj's shell, could be mistaken for segmentation at first glance.

As for the Bloodbee...a description clarification that the pink end is the mouth is the only thing needed. I think I originally didn't know Xenobees (non-genus-group at the time) all flew with their rumps first.

This post has been edited by Coolsteph: Feb 1 2021, 08:34 AM

The Greencrest might be fixable with a supplementary image to elaborate on the shell-body distinction

QUOTE (MNIDJM @ Feb 1 2021, 09:54 PM)

The Greencrest might be fixable with a supplementary image to elaborate on the shell-body distinction

I disagree. There is no shell-body distinction to point out because it was drawn without any shell at all, just soft skin with no hard edges.

That's true. I somehow misinterpreted the shell at first. I can make a fixed version by painting over the Greencrest art and updating the description to elaborate on it having an expanded soft body.

These two species have illegal diets (the vast majority of their prey have no scales and have never had scales, some of the others used to have scales but lost them secondarily, and the few that actually do have scales don't cover their ranges completely and some don't have fish-like scales at all), and therefore they also have illegal ranges and nonsensical descriptions caused by misinterpretation:
https://sagan4alpha.miraheze.org/wiki/Sucker_Swarmer
https://sagan4alpha.miraheze.org/wiki/Left-Right_Scalucker

What should be done?

It should be easy to adapt them so they technically take shallow bites of skin, which includes scales should some of their hosts have scales.

I agree with coolsteph, since that would be a sufficient diet for such small predators. In addition, I agree with cube about the potential fix for the pedesorms, since that would allow for more active descendants (though it still leaves the issue that one of them evolved bones).

I've added a plenthog issue to the list at the start of the thread.